The antagonists—oiled, shaved, pierced, and tattooed; the glaring lights; the pounding music; the shouting crowd: professional wrestling is at once spectacle, sport, and business. Steel Chair to the Head provides a multifaceted look at the popular phenomenon of pro wrestling. The contributors combine critical rigor with a deep appreciation of wrestling as a unique cultural form, the latest in a long line of popular performance genres. They examine wrestling as it happens in the ring, is experienced in the stands, is portrayed on television, and is discussed in online chat rooms. In the process, they reveal wrestling as an expression of the contradictions and struggles that shape American culture.

The essayists include scholars in anthropology, psychology, film studies, communication studies, and sociology, one of whom used to wrestle professionally. Classic studies of wrestling by Roland Barthes, Carlos Monsiváis, Sharon Mazer, and Henry Jenkins appear alongside original essays. Whether exploring how pro wrestling inflects race, masculinity, and ideas of reality and authenticity; how female fans express their enthusiasm for male wrestlers; or how lucha libre provides insights into Mexican social and political life, Steel Chair to the Head gives due respect to pro wrestling by treating it with the same thorough attention usually reserved for more conventional forms of cultural expression.

Praise

“[Steel Chair to the Head] manages to incorporate a number of interesting perspectives on a complex topic and provides a number of essays that are genuinely illuminating. It did not help me win many converts to professional wrestling, but I would like to think that it won some converts to critical thinking.” — Bart Beaty, Canadian Journal of Communication

"Steel Chair to the Head . . . serves 14 arguments that swell over the simple fluff and shallow violence and pry deeper into the wet, sticky blood of the antagonists, the heart of the industry narrative, and its continuous thud and ritualistic timing for wrestling's own cultural reflection. . . . [A]n unparalleled look at the cultural interaction wrestling has with history and the world. . . . [A] wrestling fan's best friend. . . ." — Nathaniel G. Moore, Verbicide

"Steel Chair To the Head is a truly fascinating look at the sport we love from a couple of steps back. . . . [T]here's no book out there quite as a broad-ranging as Steel Chair To the Head." — Greg Oliver, Slam! Sports,

"[U]nparalelled. . . . Steel Chair to the Head is a wrestling fan's best friend, and the anti-fan's worst enemy. . . . Steel Chair to the Head gives a sort of stigmatic closure to pro wrestling by elevating its criticism and delivery to an intelligent sensitivity. . . . This fact-heavy anthology shows the brain behind the phenomenon that has disrupted our ever unbalanced culture. A definite too for a fan of media, wrestling fan or not." — Nathaniel G. Moore, bookslut.com,

"In the end, Steel Chair to the Head succeeds in showing that pro wrestling is one of the more brutally honest cultural mirrors in our midst, a relationship more akin to symbiosis than parasitism: a form of entertainment finally explored." — Thomas Wheatley, Flagpole,

"Why do millions of pro wrestling fans spend their Saturday nights watching well-oiled, muscled and costumed men performing in a well-rehearsed stage play in which the winner is decided days earlier? What attracts devotees to this sport? Editor Sammond and a host of academics answer these and many other questions, explaining what they think really goes on inside and outside that ring. . . ." — Publishers Weekly,

“Steel Chair to the Head is an exceptionally smart and well-crafted collection that will be a valuable resource for popular culture scholars of all stripes. From start to finish, there’s not a weak essay in the book. One of the best anthologies—on popular culture or anything else—that I’ve read in a long time.” — Gilbert B. Rodman, author of Elvis after Elvis: The Posthumous Career of a Living Legend

“The mat is the place where sport and entertainment smack down. This excellent collection of greatest hits and latest memories of wrestling teases out the contradictions of this infinitely frustrating, excessive spectacle of domination and parody.” — Toby Miller, author of Sportsex

Nicholas Sammond is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Babes in Tomorrowland: Walt Disney and the Making of the American Child, 1930–1960, also published by Duke University Press.